What is the system supposed to do if you remove the storage without
   unmounting it? Just discard all buffered data (including metadata) and
   return an error for future requests? I agree that it should panic in
   this case, but really the user is asking for trouble if they do this.


why should the kernel panic?  if the user does something stupid and
they lose some data, that's their fault, but there's no reason to go
panicking on them.  that's lazy.

the older panic was *not* on purpose.  it simply crashed ...


note that sometimes you don't even have to "mean" to do this.  the
first time it happened to me (including the crash) was when i left
my digicam plugged in and mounted on netbsd...and then the camera
turned itself off, or ran out of battery...  i was very non-plussed
when this crash caused me to lose work ...


.mrg.